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An age-old motif runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This notion which extends far back to the time of silent film comedy. Within the DCU reboot *Superman*, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events for personal gain. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the bad guy is a privileged biotech mogul spending tens of millions to trap the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the wrongdoers are a family of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a well-meaning mother's altruistic invention and set her up for murder, all for their financial benefit.

A Lineage of Film Elite Villainy

In the remake of *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy running a TV network that profits hugely by taking advantage of and killing people living in extreme hardship, while leveraging deepfakes and a sophisticated media apparatus to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about class division in such a blunt manner, but its evil characters enjoy obvious luxury while exploiting and abusing Oz's most vulnerable population, forcing them out of jobs and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top movie, sets the tough inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against arrogant elites who inhabit opulent sky-high mansions in the sky. Even, the zany comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause worldwide catastrophe — to make money, of course.

There is little inherently notable in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, are devoid of conscience, and a insatiable, privileged hunger for more wealth. "Elites are the bad guys and scrappy underdogs are heroes" as a theme goes back to the dawn of cinema, with Chaplin’s silent movies setting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, authority figures, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the whole legacy of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that riches is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the overthrowing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.

The Outlet That Changes Nothing

However, for some reason, we consistently fail to taking down the wealthy. Whenever elected officials respond to a tragic gun violence event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I sigh with frustration, because if people really were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not continue to revere billionaires. And yet the news makes it obvious every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after decades of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.

In fact, it appears that the constant stream of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has provided us with a relief valve that hinders real-world action. Provided with a steady diet of mostly uplifting stories where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about good conquering evil. These films are like moral fairy tales, implying that the system works, and that resourceful individuals will root out any bad apples among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves through sheer effort.

A More Pointed Edge in 2025

Although 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they certainly adhere to some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory nowadays to see rich people gain some humility about modesty, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel affluent villains were slaughtered by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and eaten by a colossal prehistoric creature (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a alien world (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on a broadcast (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).

"Almost none of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car finale, likely due to it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."

The "off to face justice" resolution isn’t cathartic anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to perish at the final act of their movies, often in notably grotesque, ironic ways.

Significant Outliers

A few stories differ, certainly. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely disgraced, revealed, and dispatched to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself exiled to the computer world, where he’s clearly being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The wealthy lynx dynasty members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid